Other measures of Los Angeles beach cities market activity, September 2007

I have been putting off doing "final" calculations for September because the data, well to put it bluntly, stinks. It's incomplete. So I have to wing it based on sales reported in the local Easy Reader. To estimate final sale date, I subtract a week from the date of the Easy Reader publication in which the sale is listed.

Based on 57 sale records, here are my sales stats based on SUPPLY records. Note that the MIN PCTRED, which is negative, actually means that properties sold for MORE than their asking price. It happens on occasion.

          SALEPRICE  SQFT   PCTRED   DOM

MEDIAN     $845,000  1733     4.5%    94
AVERAGE    $948,814  1846     4.9%   125 
MIN        $369,900   410    -7.2%    10
MAX      $2,400,000  3839    20.2%   475

Here is my chart of DOM for September. I came up with a median DOM of 94 and an average DOM of 125 days. My calculations of time on market have been hanging in there at about 3 months for median and 4 months for average.

Shorewood has published September numbers.

According to the Shorewood numbers, DOM for the beach cities housing markets has edged up to 48, up from 42 in September 2006. As you can see, there is a huge gap between what I come up with and what they come up with for all the beach cities.

A real estate flyer landed on my doorstep yesterday from an agent at Re/Max. The flyer listed 10 properties sold in North Redondo Beach between September 16 and October 16, then calculated an average sale price for the 10 properties (a horrible use of statistics) and an average DOM of 42 days. It appeared this realtor was polishing her sale data to show the local market in the best possible light. I sincerely hope my results are more accurate. At least I have a larger sample size!

More data from Shorewood for the beach cities. Here is the September chart for Supply Strength (Demand Weakness). Inventory is starting to shoot up again relative to sales. In September 2006 inventory was at 751, in September 2007 it was at 613. In September 2006 there were 142 sales, in September 2007 there were 117 sales. My ratio was 4.29 in September 2006, and it is 4.24 in September 2007.

Median price for the beach cities for September was $950,000, up from $887,000 in September 2006.

I hope that CAR publishes the September 2007 median price report within the next week; then I can update CAR's Redondo Beach chart.